Notable
- Testing (quality, security, and performance) initiates changes.
- Bugs initiate change.
- Preference and drive initiate a few changes as well.
At this stage in our intranet and infrastructure construction project — with deadlines looming and money tight — I twinge a bit every time I communicate a change to any part of the interface or the specs.
Organizational requirements and user needs are what started this change process. This fact underpins everything else, yet the inevitable pressures to bring the project home despite remaining deficiencies, do begin to affect judgement and prioritization.
A prioritization pep talk
Every change falling in category 1 and 2 is pretty easy to justify. No twinging. Category 3 is more of a grey area. So in the final stage as our instincts fall prey to arguments concerning “good enough”, Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article on the now familiar story of the Xerox PARC was a welcome reminder that tweaks can sometimes be as integral to success as having a solid concept to begin with. Reworking and tinkering are close cousins of innovation and creativity, and key to quality results.
Let Xerox, Apple and the modern mouse inspire
The difference between direct and indirect manipulation—between three buttons and one button, three hundred dollars and fifteen dollars, and a roller ball supported by ball bearings and a free-rolling ball—is not trivial. It is the difference between something intended for experts, which is what Xerox PARC had in mind, and something that’s appropriate for a mass audience, which is what Apple had in mind. PARC was building a personal computer. Apple wanted to build a popular computer.
— Excerpt from Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation, by Malcolm Gladwell
I’m not comparing what we are doing to anything by Xerox or Apple, but Gladwell’s account does pertain to the task at hand. We aren’t building a system for engineers, we are building it for an organization made up of engineers and students and artists … and secretaries, and managers, and technicians, and, and, and. Our user’s needs and abilities must shape what we release, and simplification is part of that. Tinkering plays a part in getting there. Tinkering, testing, and training.
Transforming and combining good concepts
In the past 7 years two other projects have tried to tackle the organization’s intranet and failed. Is our solution better? Maybe. Are we doing something revolutionary? Not really. What is different this time? The technology is different, but the true difference is that our focus is not the technology itself but a combination of proven concepts, which can benefit our organization. The recipe combines a little bit of Netvibes’ modularity with an RSS-reader’s utility, adding just a dash of Facebook’s sense of community and freedom to self organize. Add to this a whole lot of good old fashioned job focused content, created specifically for our users by professionals, and organized as simply as possible.
“Creativity isn’t magic,” a nice reminder of the power of a good combination comes from the latest installment of Everything is a Remix. This excellent series by Kirby Ferguson explores how innovations truly happen.
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